Daddy
by Glory-To-Our-August-King
Summary: What's it like to be a dad? Is it anything like looking down on your wife's body in the hospital, holding a whimpering newborn in your arms?


What's it like to be a dad?

What's it like to be a dad?

I don't know.

Is it anything like looking down on your wife's body, holding a whimpering baby in your arms? You're not even paying attention to the baby. You're just holding her because a nurse handed her off and you didn't want to be the guy who lost his wife and daughter in the same day because you dropped the goddamn baby.

You're just staring down at your wife, who was only hours ago red-eyed and scared and full of life and fight. Even that sunset hair of hers has faded some. There's still some color left in her face and god you wish you could just see her eyes, those bright blue eyes that make the whole world seem electric, alive. They're closed though. They're closed and they'll never open again and you know it deep in your heart because you're standing in front of her body, wondering what the hell you're supposed to do.

So you cry.

You break so hard you hug the baby tighter and bury your face against hers in some weak, pitiful attempt to seek comfort in something – anything.

What's it like when your entire world, your reason for going on in the fucking morning when you have another nightmare about the life you took and wonder why you fucking bother, is gone?

What's it like to be a dad?

What's it like when you first see the hurt in your daughter's eyes, those eyes so much like her mother's? When you throw a half-empty beer bottle across the room at her because you told her she's being too loud and the walls are spinning?

She runs to her room and you think you can hear faint sobbing, but all you can do is snap open another beer because you just feel sorry for yourself and you need to drink more to make it stop. That's the thing. It doesn't stop. The more and more you drink, the deeper you sink. You think the alcohol takes the pain away but it just makes it more profound and ugly and twisted. Turns into the aggressive lung cancer that took your wife from you while she was having the c-section, trading her life for your daughter's.

It makes you realize why you never touched the stuff before. It would have been too easy. It _was_ too easy, giving into the numbness and the haze. You drank and drank and you couldn't stop because there was no one to hurt you and tell you you were being an idiot and that you were better than this. If she was there you wouldn't have needed to drink.

And you tried to be responsible, you really did, at first. You tried to be better than the booze. It started with a six pack one night when the baby hadn't stopped crying until 4 in the morning and you were feeling emptier than usual and you needed something to fill the gnawing void. Then it was a trip to the convenience store every night. Then that 5% shit wasn't enough and you decided to go for the liquor because it didn't put you to sleep like the wine did and it was at least 30% no matter what you bought. Win-win.

What's it like when your little girl, who's only just begun junior high, has to come visit you in Jail? What's it like having to explain to her why you're there?

 _Daddy got really fucking hammered and started a fight, sweetie_. You don't say that though, because she's your daughter and you realize what a fuck up job you've done all these years. You can see it in the woman who practically raised you, standing behind your child with her arms crossed, disdain bleeding through every part of her being.

Your little girl is just so happy to see her daddy and it makes you want to cry because you know you don't deserve the love she so desperately and freely wants to give.

"I miss you, daddy."

"When are you coming home?"

When they leave you _do_ cry, because you know what the woman you lost would say if she was still here. You're still standing in that stupid, sterile hospital room with her body. Twice in a single lifetime is too much. She turns to you, even though her flesh is cold and gray, and her gaze is so much worse than something dead. It's completely, utterly disappointed in you. _What have you done?_

You still see those same eyes, because your little girl is so much like her mama, so much that you can't stand to look at her sometimes. She doesn't understand why her daddy gets mad at her for nothing. She can't possibly fathom why her daddy just sits on his bed some nights and cries.

What's it like to get sober?

It's fucking hell.

And of course you're too goddamn weak to deal with it. You start getting into the prescription pills, ever since you broke your arm and had to take some of the heavy stuff for the pain. It was good to not feel again.

Even high out of your mind, you can make out the anger on your little girl's face when she comes home late, heavy duffle bag around her shoulder. You've missed another hockey game. She isn't so little anymore either, she's already seventeen. So big, so grown up. You can see how tired she is too, and not from the game. She peeks through the door, sees you sprawled across the bed in a drug-induced stupor and shakes her head.

"Pathetic."

You don't disagree. You don't argue. She's right, afterall. You _are_ pathetic. You're so worthless. Seventeen years your daughter has been waiting for you to be her father, while all you've done is wallow in the hurt, choosing to give in instead of fight against it. You can't even do that for her.

It's too late for you to get any of that back.

It's too late for everything.

Your daughter hates you, your would-be-mother hasn't talked to you, let alone looked at you, for the past five years.

There's nothing left for you.

You decide that everyone will be better off without you.

What's it like to wake up in the hospital, when you were just in the bathtub bleeding out?

You hear the reports of the EKG first and it takes you back to a time when you were younger, when you were confused and there was a girl in the middle of it all. But you're still young, aren't you? You haven't grown up at all, have you? And there's still a girl, caught up in your chaos.

There's still a girl and she's collapsed atop you, a wetness seeping through the sheets. Her shoulders are shaking and she sounds so lost and broken you want to reach out and put all the pieces back.

Don't cry, baby girl, please don't cry. Daddy's here. Daddy's okay.

Those are the things you want to say. You can't. Your body's too weak and there's this freaking mask over your face making sure you can breathe. You reach out and every fiber in every muscle tears and screams at you to stop. You're so very fragile now.

She flinches as you touch her and god those bright swirls of blue knock the breath from your lungs when they find you, wet and swollen with emotion. They pierce straight through you, like they always have – uncovering a part of you no one else can see. That no one else has _ever_ seen. You don't know where it is and it's always scared the hell out of you, how easily she sees you.

But she does and you remember all the times she made you smile, so young and bright and pure. She's always tried her hardest to make you smile, to make you hers. In a way, you've always belonged to her. From the minute she came into the world and you realized she was all you had left.

What's it like living in an institution for a year straight? Not like the prestigious kind of institution either, but the kind where all the basket cases and addicts end up.

It's only fitting for you. Maybe you should have been here all along.

You're moved around in a wheelchair most of the time, whenever you're not shambling around in your room like a zombie. You filled your body with so many poisons and toxins it's struggling with even the most basic functions. You shit yourself in bed during the day and the sweating, burning withdrawals make you scream yourself hoarse at night.

Your daughter doesn't visit you.

It's easy to tell yourself that you're okay with that. You don't deserve her kind-hearted radiance after what you did, anyway. You don't deserve her. Just like you didn't deserve her mom. The world is too good for the likes of you.

What's it like sending your girl off to college, all grown up and ready to start her long, prosperous life?

You wouldn't know. You missed that part of her life while you were locked up in the institution. She graduated highschool and went off to study abroad, a big intellectual like her mama. You just shake your head, smiling through the sting because you're so goddamn proud despite being so alone in your old home, once bustling with the life of a little girl. _Just like her mama_. You keep thinking. _So proud. She'd be so proud_. You know it, feel it like she's standing there with you, and for the first time in a year you break down, begging for forgiveness.

One day, you get a letter in the mail. It's from that ritzy college your daughter goes to over in France. She hasn't called or emailed since she left. You've gotten a job down at the Kyoto Kream, a cushy manager position serving ice cream to snot-nosed brats and their prim and proper mothers who condescend to you when they can't read the ice cream labels properly. Cushy.

Your hands shake as you open the letter, heart pounding harder and faster than the jackhammer outside. The wording is professional, detached even – a careful hand that manages to paint elegant words with economic efficiency. It's a request that you attend a graduation. Your daughter's getting her Masters degree in Psychology.

You're so excited you can't sit down, just pace back and forth, reading that letter over and over again. It doesn't matter that she only refers to you as Mr. Soryu through the entirety of the letter instead of dad or daddy. You're going to go see her. You're going to be there for her for once in your sorry life. You start packing. You've got a shift at 9 tomorrow but you buy a plane ticket instead.

What's it like meeting your little girl for the first time in six years?

There are crowds of people, simple and right looking people who probably worry about trivial things like the weather, or how the neighbor insists on trimming their hedges, the jerk.

You realize you must look like hell in comparison. Your nose is a bit crooked from that bar fight, having never set quite right again. You gave up shaving for the most part too, only bothering to keep things a bit trimmed so those uptight mothers don't file a complaint with corporate. You've also got a bald spot going and you're embarrassed so you wear some ratty baseball cap that's frayed at the edges and smells like baby powder.

Then you see her.

She's facing away from you, but you'd recognize that head of deep velvet red hair anywhere. You walk up, in a daze, letting your senses drink all of her in. How she's about as tall as you now, how beautiful and elegant she is. Not a girl anymore, but a woman, so proud and confident. It's like you're walking up to a part of your soul, lost in all the drinking and lying and screaming. You've found it again and it's so bright it blinds you.

She turns and the world stops, as if you're the only two people in it. Blazing blue skies that have haunted your dreams open up to you. Where once they filled you with a longing so profound you'd often confuse it with a heart attack, now they're present and desperate.

"You came," she says, her voice shaking.

You touch her, assuring yourself that this is right and real. You pull her close and hug her as if you're trying to fuse together into one being, one entity. In the back of your mind you're relieved when she clutches back at you, afraid at even the thought of letting you go. Afraid she might lose you forever if she does.

"Please don't cry, baby girl. Daddy's here. Daddy's right here. Please don't cry."

What's it like to be a dad?

It's all too many things to name.

Amidst the uncertainty, the one facet you well and truly understand is that you, more than anything, love your daughter.

And so long as the moon and the stars are still in the sky above, so long as you have her there in your arms –

Somehow you know, everything will be alright.


End file.
